As of: February 20, 2024, 4:26 p.m
By: Dirk Walter
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The S-Bahn trains collided not far from Ebenhausen-Schäftlarn © ADAC/dpa
Two years ago, two S-Bahn trains collided near Schäftlarn.
One person died and 51 were injured.
Now train driver Richard Z. is on trial - a broken man with teary eyes.
Munich - It's around midday, the interrogation of the witness Simon S. is almost over, when the defendant calls out something to him in a muffled voice.
“Simon,” says Richard Z., the accused train driver, “I’m so sorry.” Then he tears up.
He takes off his large glasses and wipes his eyes.
The witness nods, he is already leaving, but he says to the defendant: "I'm sure you didn't do it on purpose."
Richard Z. (56) and Simon S. (24) were colleagues, both train drivers for the Munich S-Bahn, when they left with their S-Bahn trains a good two years ago, on February 14, 2022, shortly after half past five on the single-track line of the S7 not far from the Ebenhausen-Schäftlarn train station.
One man, a 24-year-old asylum seeker from Wolfratshausen, died in the collision on the train, and 51 other passengers suffered injuries, some of them very serious.
Train driver suffered 14 fractures
The indictment lists: vertebral fractures, rib and leg fractures, craniocerebral trauma, cuts, lacerations to the head, whiplash.
Simon S. had 14 broken bones - in his vertebrae, ribs, fingers and foot.
He had to undergo three operations.
Nevertheless, the young man seems surprisingly stable.
Everything has healed, he assures the court.
He didn't need psychological treatment.
Judge Nesrin Reichle seems almost astonished at the severity of the accident.
Three days of sessions are planned for the trial at the district court, but everything is actually already clear: Simon S.'s train driver colleague, Richard Z., now 56, takes all the blame.
Right at the start of the trial he makes a statement.
“It is inexplicable to me why I made such mistakes,” says the man in the dock at the Munich Criminal Justice Center.
He has no memory of the accident, despite trauma counseling.
And even though he walked the route months after the accident - in an effort to remember.
Inconclusive.
But S-Bahn trains have a memory, a kind of black box like in an airplane.
This made it possible to reconstruct the course of the accident fairly completely.
On February 14th at around 4:24 p.m., Richard Z. started his S-Bahn from Wolfratshausen towards Munich.
His train was supposed to wait at Ebenhausen-Schäftlarn station until an S-Bahn from Munich arrived from the opposite direction on the single-track line.
Red signal simply ignored
But Richard Z. didn't wait.
First he passed the exit signal 1P1, which was red.
He was then forced to brake, but “grossly breached his duty”, as the indictment states, he freed himself by pressing a certain button (“PZB free”) in the driver’s cab of his S-Bahn.
Two crucial mistakes.
But Z. continued driving and accelerated to 67 km/h.
After a curve there was the oncoming S-Bahn from Munich.
Simon S. in the driver's cab of this train was still wondering why his train had automatically braked.
Then he saw the disaster coming.
“Shit, there’s a train coming,” he shouted to the dispatcher in Wolfratshausen on the train radio.
“What?” shouted the dispatcher.
Then the tape recording stops.
The collision is recorded at 4:35 p.m. and 37 seconds.
Judge Reichle uses a projector to project several accident photos onto the wall.
Both cabs of the trains were completely torn apart.
Train driver Simon S. probably only survived because he tried to escape out the side door seconds before the impact and was then thrown into a cavity.
“That saved my life.” Train driver Richard Z. was also seriously injured – a broken hip and hematomas all over his body.
Because of the risk of suicide, he was hospitalized for psychological treatment after the accident.
Train driver cries in court
Sitting in front of the court in room 101A is a broken person who hasn't had much luck in his life recently.
Z has only been trained as a train driver since May 2020. He was a so-called career changer who went through a one-year training phase.
Previously, the unmarried lathe operator worked in metal construction, and the judge also mentioned personal bankruptcy.
When the charges are read out, Z. has to breathe in and out deeply and repeatedly wipes his tear-stained eyes.
Train driving “was my big dream,” he says, “even as a little boy.”
He had top grades and “was in the top three,” as his instructor testified as a witness.
“It was a picture-perfect training,” he continues.
“I was very proud of myself,” says Z.
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He was considered a model student
But the model student of yesteryear cannot say why he ran the red signal.
“I don’t know, I have no idea,” he says.
The memory of the minutes before the accident is “completely gone, everything”.
The judge asks about previous illnesses and medication abuse.
But apart from blood pressure and cholesterol-lowering drugs, Z. didn't take anything.
A search of his apartment also yielded no results: everything was “clean, unremarkable,” according to the police report.
On his cell phone: just a few private, harmless pictures, nothing offensive, no cell phone game anyway.
Today Simon S., the defendant's colleague, is driving the S-Bahn again, but only part-time, as he says.
He was thinking.
Train drivers have to endure a lot.
Not that after the accident a suicide would end up in front of the track and then “images would come back up”.
He is studying and wants a different professional perspective.
From a legal perspective, the Schäftlarn S-Bahn accident is a case of negligent homicide and negligent bodily harm in 51 cases.
Richard Z. faces a maximum of four years in prison, but his remorse is likely to have a mitigating effect on his sentence.
He is trying to regain his footing professionally – as a postman.
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